Last January, Ae Sangasy, a Laos-born Portlander with bouncy purple hair, opened Cully Centralbeer bar (4579 NE Cully Blvd) in the once-grimy spot that had housed the Shady Lady strip club. She and her biz partners refurbished tables with planks from old Hollywood Bowl lanes and prepped a menu of bold drinking foods more typical of Southeast Asia than Northeast Portland. (Think “stinkalicious” papaya salad thick with fish sauce and chile or chubby, hand-rolled rice noodles in shallot-heady chicken broth.) Sangasy crossed her fingers, hoping her neighbors would embrace the flavors—a world away from burgers and hot wings. Surprise: Cully showed up, with no sign yet of slowing.

Pop by and you’ll see locals demolishing paper plates piled with garlicky grilled beef and sticky rice between sips of Crux and Buoy drafts, or loading curry-scented crispy rice salad into lettuce leaves. Kids scribble on a giant chalkboard wall; staffers tune the big screens to ESPN, or stream YouTube videos of Milli Vanilli. The charming bar is emblematic of the unique restaurants that thrive in this still-diverse, relatively low-rent area. It also helps makes a case for Cully’s rise as one of the city’s coolest food hoods.

This flurry of personal, intimate eateries is no accident. While so many “renewed” neighborhoods serve an interchangeable plug-and-play lineup of local food chains like Laughing Planet and Blue Star Donuts, this scrappier transformation is intentional—the result of years of careful curatorial work by two Cully-based economic development agencies, forward-thinking property owners, and outreach by neighborhood community groups. A philosophy connects them: when Cully hits the big time and foodies flock, the neighborhood’s business owners will reflect and celebrate this diverse, affordable neighborhood, not obliterate it.

Ultimately, Sangasy says it’s locals, not food tourists, who will keep places like her bar humming. “The neighbors come for dinner and say, ‘We’re gonna keep coming in. Because we want you to stay around for a long, long time.”